Wide load planning questions

All of this stuff is fine and dandy until you get into construction

 

Yeah had that happen a while ago. Was permited on a road that was closed for a couple of days but wasn't on the state web site.

 

What are you doing in construction??? State should have routed you around any construction zones. That's their job.. Hor_19 book is a real good investment. Pretty darn accurate and easy. Never had a problem with it.

 

You can get construction and width restriction info online too...pretty much every state has it...without the internet annual permits would be useless.

If you don't have internet in the truck, just call the DOT...they'll help you...or at least they have always helped me...I know most of the people that work at the scale coming into SD (Tilford) by first name, LOL...coming through there hauling combines with an annual permit, the construction was going on in so many places and moving around so much...even their website couldn't keep up with it all, I called them every time...already had my route picked, just let them double check it with their info.

 

Annual permit maybe...

That is the down side of annuals, gotta pick your own route...its the same in IL hauling farm equipment, if its not over height, they don't give you any routing....with a 10' tractor thats not a big geal, but with a 12' sprayer it can sometimes mean you'll have to do some homework...even more with a combine.

 

The experience is extremely valuable and worth the fee, I know that for me routing is difficult in areas I have not run in extensively.would be good for one truck operations.

 

Not always the case. Ran into a case where I had a stretch load, 14 wide, 100 ft long, going through Illinois. Suddenly, I came up on road construction on a bridge where they had the jersey barrier blocking a lane. A 12 wide wouldnt fit through there, let alone a 14 wide stretch. My front car stopped. I stopped. Called the state and they sent an HP. Turns out the contractor started the construction a week earlier than he was supposed to. Talk about a big mess trying to back that thing up for miles.

 

Depending on the size of the load, the areas you are planning to run into in the northeast might designate your load as a superload. Meaning police escort. EXPENSIVE AS HELL! We had some of our guys run blades in to Mass and it took them 3 weeks round trip because of permits, and curfews and whatnot. Even civilian pilot cars get expensive when you have to pay for a weeks worth of overnights.

One of my guys drove for Lonestar. He got a load going to Birmingham. He calls me leaving Laredo with his firt 14 wide. "This is easy. Piece of cake." He stopped in Orange,TX at the Hook. I ask him if he did his homework. "Yes! I even signed my Alabama permit in red ink." As soon as he mentioned ink, I knew he didnt do his homework.
His pilot car for Louisiana showed up at 0940. I would have been pissed, but he blew if off, "After all, theres a curfew around Lake Charles." even so, he should have left out no later than 0820.

He called me back later to chat when he was in Baton Rouge. I asked him if his pilot car was still behind him. He told me yes. "Ive been talking to you for 2 minutes on the phone...I havent heard him call out to you on the CB." He said, "Well, he doesnt like to talk much."

What????

"Hold on, I got to make a U-turn..."

A U-turn...with a 14 wide? What the...?

"Buddy, let me call you back."

They routed him 10,12,61,190. He thought 190 was to the south of 12 and went 61 south. He made a U-turn, got back on route and got stopped by a local.
"Driver, where is your police escort?"
"I dont need a police escort, I have a civilian escort."
The cop showed him on his own permit where he was supposed to have a police escort for Baton Rouge and Denham Springs when you are off the interstate. My buddy got a driving award.

He called me later in the day, "That cop was an a-hole. He could have given me a break."
He did give you a break.
"How do you figure?"
He didnt void your permit.
"But he wrote me a $355 ticket."
If he had voided your permit, it would have been 10x that. I thought you said that you did your homework.
" I did. But that thing about the police escort was in the fine print. Even my pilot car didnt catch that."
The slacker? He didnt even look at the permit. Whose responsibility is it to read and understand permits? The slacker pilot car?
"Mine."

Point is this: there are lots of toll roads in the northeast that you are going to be routed around. Even the pilot car directory doesnt show the rules for the little city and county people that have their hands in the pot.

 

You need to make sure that you read each and every permit very carefully, even if you just ran a load through the state on the same route a week earlier. My niece and her husband used to run some over sized freight. They had a driver once who picked a load up in South Carolina that came to Tennessee. They got a call from him when he was stopped in Georgia. He wasn't even supposed to be in Georgia. His permits ran him through North Carolina to Tennessee. The driver never even read his permits. Last year I ran several loads to Oklahoma. I usually take I-40, when possible. One week I could take I-40, the next week with a similar load, I was routed about 100 miles around some road construction that began in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Since we were unaware of the road construction, we sent in our permit request for I-40. The state changed it due to construction.

It is much easier to do a load that is only wide. You need to do a lot more homework when you are tall, wide and/or long. You can get into some very strange routing.

 

Ran into the same thing yesterday in Oklahoma. Only 12 wide, but they routed me down 60,59,69,62,64,266,2,9,69,75. Ran into construction. They had the southbound lane cross over to northbound. Thankfully, it was just barrels. The construction guys with the SLOW signs all started to back away. I moved quite a few barrels.